That is what hunting is for, beyond meat and territory. Motion. Focus. Blood. The clean line between danger and purpose. A male takes his weapon into the open land, tests himself against what lives there, and returns calmer than when he left.
Usually.
Today, nothing is calm.
I ride out with the paint drying on my skin and Keandra’s hands still living in my body as clearly as if she stood behind me on the trail. Her fingers on my face. Her touch in my hair. The whole rasha watching while I handed her a place no one else held before her except Oshara.
I chose it deliberately.
That is the truth I keep turning over in my mind while the hunting party moves through tall grass and low stone and the smell of prey drifts in and out on the wind.
I saw the way Keandra stood on the edge of things even after the mating fire, even after my bed, even after the predator basin.Protected, yes. Marked, yes. But still standing in my world as though she might be permitted space only until someone older, stronger, more rightful took it back from her.
That could not continue.
A wife uncertain of her place becomes easy prey for the minds of others. Not because the horde would openly move against her. Because uncertainty breeds small cuts. Withheld warmth. Waiting eyes. The feeling of having to ask before taking a breath in a space already meant to hold you.
I would not have that for her.
So when the paint was prepared and Oshara stood ready as always, I looked at the horde and chose the truth I wanted them to learn first. My Sahri would not stand behind old custom like some tolerated shadow in my household. She would stand before me. Touch my skin. Bind my hair. Prepare me for the hunt where all could see.
I expected the camp to understand. They did. That was not the problem.
The problem was Keandra.
Not her obedience. She came when I called. Took the bowl. Steadied her hands. Did not shame herself or me. She did everything right in a moment built to crush a less stubborn female. Still, even while she stood before me with all eyes on her, I saw it.
A question in her blood.
Why me.
Why so publicly.
What does it truly mean.
Instinct tells me the answer is obvious. I chose her because she is mine. I placed her there because that place belongs to my mate more rightly than to any old custom. I made the horde watch because the horde needed to understand before another day passed.
Simple.
Except humans are not simple in the same places.
I have known that from the first hour. I know it better now. A Tigris female raised among the hordes would have understood the gesture at once. Not all its layers perhaps, but enough. Enough to feel the claim in it. Enough to know she had been lifted, not tested. Enough to answer me with pride rather than that startled stillness Keandra carried under her skin even after it was done.
The difference frustrates me. Then shames me for the frustration.
Because she crossed worlds for me. She entered my bed, my camp, my law, my dangers. She learns every day and remains standing even while fear and hunger and strangeness pull at her from old wounds. If she cannot receive my world whole in the exact way instinct says she should, that is not weakness.
It is simply truth.
It leaves me with a problem no hunt can solve. How does a male built from command, scent, and action make a human female understand what his body already knows so absolutely?
The party brings down two mid-sized plains beasts by late afternoon. Clean kills. Good meat. The younger warriors should be satisfied. One is, loudly. Another takes my correction without argument when I tell him his stance at the second approach was sloppy and would have cost him blood against smarter prey. The men are alive. The kill is good. The route home is clear.
None of it changes the fact that Keandra’s face remains fixed in my mind. The way she looked up at me when I said her name before the horde. The way her fingers steadied in my hair. The way uncertainty and heat and disbelief moved together over her face when I touched her after.
I should be pleased only. On one level, I am. The horde saw. Oshara accepted the bowl back from Keandra’s hands. No one will mistake my intention now.
And yet.
